They Gave and Got Rich: Andre Agassi

Andre Agassi, the tennis great of the last part of the 20th century, has been described as the last of the great Americans.


Agassi ruled tennis courts like no other, however he had a greater calling: social welfare activities. His charitable and philanthropic efforts are not however, as well known as his tennis court exploits.

Here is a brief summary of his philanthropic contributions:

• Founded the Andre Agassi Charitable Association for Las Vegas's youth.
• Agassi has been the most charitable and socially committed tennis player.
• Founded the Boys & Girls Club that trains more than 2,000 children every year in tennis, basketball and athletics.
• Founded the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy. It is a tuition-free charter school for at-risk children in the Las Vegas area.
• Started Child Haven,  a  residence for abused and neglected children, the only one of its kind in Clark County. 
• Donated $720,000 towards the construction of a Cottage for Medically Fragile Children. This center is for developmentally handicapped children and children quarantined for infectious diseases.

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How to Use Affirmations to Get Results

Affirmations are a sure-fire method of bringing about major changes in your life. The changes can be material-having more wealth, better living conditions, and fulfilling other desires. The change can also be personal-transformation of character, making or dropping habits, and other goals.

You can find voluminous material on how to use affirmations all over the net. Here we will focus on how to make them effective.

Your subconscious is an asset you are born with. It is somewhat like a personal servant who carries out your every beck and call. The only caution is that you need to keep an eye on it and give directions in the proper way. Isn't this similar to managing your domestic help or servant?

Affirmations are the directions that you give to your subconscious. If the subconscious must receive your directions and act upon them, you need to follow these points carefully:

• Once you have finalized the affirmation, do not change it.
• Write it everyday. If you are repeating it verbally, do it regularly.
• While writing/repeating the affirmation, be calm, focused, and serious. Preferably, meditate for some time before affirming.
• Trust the subconscious: do not keep checking for results. As mentioned above, calm, regular repetition is the key.
• An indispensable affirmation to go with all programs of personal development: Day by day, in every respect, I am getting better and better. It lifts you up even during temporary setbacks.
• The affirmation must be beneficial to you and not harmful to anybody else. Intentions to manipulate or harm will have repercussions. 
• Lastly, no change is permanent. Affirmations need to be repeated everyday, even after achieving success in personal development.

Photo credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

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In Retrospect...Spend Time Wisely

Most bloggers would have nurtured dreams of making it big with Adsense. Google has provide a free platform, all you have to do is set up your blog, set up the ads and write away...and wait for the traffic to come clicking in..so that the checks start flying in...


I too subscribed to this notion...that is until I had a look at the AdSense earnings of top sites and my own. Here are the figures:
The average income from Adsense is $1 per 1000 page views. This can go lower, till $.007. A site like www.whatshouldbetchescallme.tumblr.com having around 3,000,000 visitors also has the same average. Doing the math, the net adsense earnings for such a site comes to $3000 a month.


How much time would a blog take to come to the million page views a month range? Not overnight. And how would that be achieved? By good content. How can you generate content? By working on your craft. It will not happen if you spent your time experimenting with ads with speculations of striking it rich with them.


AdSense and other online advertising are at best side revenues. It cannot be a major source of income. Creative people would do better at developing their main skill (writing, building sites, painting, whatever...) rather than spend time tweaking ads.
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Overcoming Pain by Helping Others

Nobody likes pain. Yet, all of us will have experienced painful experiences that we wanted to get rid of, as soon as possible. Various religions, Yoga and modern techniques like Hypnotism advocate several  techniques for the same. It is a necessary technique for each of us, as life is unpredictable and one can come up against any situation any time.

I was also mortally afraid of pain, especially physical. I marveled at people who faced it and emerged triumphant.

However, an experience opened up to me a much-unexpected path to transcend pain.

It was the month of May in Kerala, India. I was visiting a relative and I had to take an old lady to the temple. There was to be a special worship at midday.

We went by car until the temple gate. From there we needed to traverse a stony path that went round the temple to reach the sanctum sanctorum, the inside of the temple.

On placing my bare foot on the stone path, I realized the predicament that I was in. The midday sun blazing overhead had baked the stone slabs so hot that one could not place one's feet on them. The priests themselves used to carry water and throw it forward, and then run along that wet trail, before it dried up. We had taken no such precaution.

I started to run on the stone path, occasionally treading on grass patches, to reach the temple before my feet were completely burned. Then I heard a scream and a yell. It was the old lady. She already had some problems with her gait and now on the hot stone, she was just crying out in agony.

Without thinking, I ran back to her and tried to help her along. I tried to walk her fast, leading over grass patches wherever possible.

She cried all the way. Somehow, we reached the inside of the temple where the worship was going on. Once inside, both of us heaved sighs of relief. I was glad I could help her.

It was then that I noticed a startling fact: I had not experienced any more pain when I started to help her.

Somehow, my helping her had erased the sensation of the burning in my feet. Was it an expansion of consciousness? I do not know.

Looking back, I feel it was an important lesson that I learnt that day:

Helping others helps you overcome your own pains - physical or mental.
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Real Freedom

If I ask you, when you became free, you might answer it as the day on which your country won independence from a dominating foreign power.

Now if you were to ask the people of that foreign power, when they became free, they would probably say: We have always been free. 

But hold on a moment here. Are we really free? Aren't we all being made to dance to the whims of our minds ? May be we are not realizing it.

A thought for having ice cream, in the mind of a 75 kg man makes him get up from his living room and walk to the ice cream parlour two blocks down the street and buy the ice cream. We are all being driven by our desires, which are but thoughts.

It is OK if we are able to choose which thoughts to entertain and which not to. In this way we can direct our life towards our chosen goals.

But when thoughts come at an uncontrollable pace, and we are not able to exercise any restraint over them, then it is a potentially dangerous situation. Many people are not even aware of this, and keep acting on impulses, and this lands them in constant trouble.

So real freedom is being able to control the vagaries of the mind, to master it, instead of being driven by it. Here is an excellent resource for winning freedom from obsessive thoughts:

How to Stop Obsessive Thoughts?

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How to Have Hope

Hope is the elixir that rejuvenates our personal development program. So often we fall flat in our self development efforts. Failure discourages and we are loath to get up and keep trying. Setting hard and fast goals and rules also makes personal development an unduly discomforting chore-not fun at all.

The environment in which we grew up, and our current situation also is hardly encouraging. This is the reality for most people. How many of your partners, parents, or friends keep on encouraging you after a fall? You are lucky if you have such a support system. For the vast majority of us, the reality is other wise-we become the butt of sarcastic jokes. People already consider us a nutcase for being personal development fans, and one cannot blame them if they take delight in our slips and falls. The reason is obvious: our efforts at transformation are forcing them to face themselves, posing the need for their own change before them.

In these circumstances, we will do well to have an internal support and encouragement system that comforts and gives us hope during our falls. Falls are bound to happen in our journey towards becoming better beings. This internal support system works like a gyroscope mechanism that stabilises itself when upset. Or it is like the magnetic needle that turns around and points back at North, however much it is disturbed.

I have found the following affirmation of immense help in this regard:

                                

                                       Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

I had been trying to get up earlier in the morning and the results were none too encouraging. Affirmations and a daily review diary were the main tools. I used to get depressed and discouraged each time I woke up late.

When I started using the above affirmation by Emily Coue, I noticed changes, even though they were in very small amounts. I am finding myself gradually waking up earlier. Some days I may slip back, but I don't beat myself up; instead I keep repeating the above affirmation. It is best to repeat it just before going to bed at night. It removes the sinking feeling of a failure and replaces it with hope.


I guess the subconscious rewards us for the trust that we place in it. It makes personal transformation easier and enjoyable.

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The Need for Focus in Online Writing

Many aspiring writers aim for diverse fields, hoping to make a success in every field. While it is OK to have many goals, online success boils down to this:

• You are always selling to a market.
• A market is a group of people with a specific need. You are addressing that need.
• Your success depends on how well you address this need.
• One of the best ways to do this is to focus on just one market in a blog /site.

Now imagine you have promoted your site/ blog/ writing in one particular market. That is a promise to the reader and he/she follows the link and visits your online window. If you have stuck to your promise and addressed just that market, your visitor will be satisfied.

But imagine if you sidetracked a bit and decided to do something on a whim: For instance you are maintaining a  personal development blog and have promoted it as such. One day you find something funny (a picture or an article idea) and you like it so much that you decide to post it.

The visitor will be confused when he sees this post on your blog, as he was expecting personal development tips. He is not likely to return.

Thus focusing on your selected niche in a particular site/blog is important for drawing in targeted traffic and for maintaining it.

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How to Overcome Fear of Failure

Have you a large number of ideas in the attic of your mind, but which you have never tried to implement? Have you the seeds of a novel in your mind, but are too anxious to try it out? Have you wanted to perform on stage, but are too apprehensive of how it will be received? These are examples of the fear of failure paralyzing potential creativity.

It has often been said that the average person uses hardly 10% of the potential of his or her brain. What prevents them from exploring the unused 90%? It is the fear of failure, also the fear of ridicule, of falling short of expectations. Isn't it a pity that so much of human talent goes to waste, just because of an irrational fear? If you overcome fear of failure, you can scale unimaginable heights in your career and your personal life.

How to know if I have a fear of failure?

Despite the facts above, the astonishing fact is that few people are even aware that they may be suffering from this fear in their psyche. This is an even more tragic situation: we don't even realize we have a hidden adversary, sabotaging our every attempt at self-actualization, of attaining our chosen goals. I'll tell you how I suffered below, but here is a quick method to find out if you have a fear of failure. If you find yourself tending to avoid certain tasks or situations, then it is likely that you are experiencing anxiety about the results of the situation. Anxiety is a visible form of latent fear.The fear itself could be rooted in traumatic experiences associated with similar situations in our past (childhood).

At school, I was a student with a good level of comprehension and curiosity and earned top grades till entering University. The fact was that I was egged on in studies by my parents. However, when I entered a professional engineering course, my grades plummeted. Eventhough I stood third (in that college) in the entrance exam for the course, at the end of the four-year course I was in the ignominious list of the non-performers, with a long backlog of failed subjects. It was a huge fall from grace for one who had scored cent percent in Mathematics during Pre-University.

Whenever I sat down to study or write a paper, I would become uncomfortable and get up. I would sit for hours staring at a page on Civil Engineering Structural Analysis, going over the sentences again and again, trying to grasp their meaning. This stemmed from the mistaken notion that one should always understand 100% of what one was reading. This is a recipe for failure because it is a perfectionist belief. The level of comprehension varies, depending on individuals, their mental and emotional states, health, and other factors. Most students gain an understanding of their subjects by repeated attempts. The first reading may yield apparently zero understanding, but it will improve with each repetition. When you are familiar with the basic concepts of a subject, this process will automatically speed up.

After ten minutes or so of attempting to comprehend a subject, I used to feel very uncomfortable. I had to  get up and dash off to watch a movie or binge on food. There was only one theater that showed English movies in the town nearby. I forgot my worries and phobias in the hot, stuffy hall, in the din of whizzing bullets and Jackie Chan's Kung fu stunts. It took many years for me to realise that I was experiencing deep anxiety, and was just running away from it.


The cause of  this anxiety dated back to my childhood days when I was forced to study at the threat of the rod. Added to it were the trauma of abuses and threats for studying, the tragedy of not being able to join my friends while they played, and the beatings on the exam eve. Sometimes my knuckles would have swollen to the size of cricket balls from beatings. All this stemmed from my mother's desire to make me into an engineer or a doctor. These were the only 'worthwhile' professions, in her point of view.

Fear of failure leads to stagnation
Granted, a major part of this fear of failure is contributed by factors beyond our control-child hood situations, circumstances at school and college, and ridicule from peers. Society seems hard wired to say 'No' to every new idea or concept. Ask thought leaders in a company and they will tell you of the tremendous resistance to change they face from the workforce, each time they try to bring in some innovation. Well, here it is fear of failure combined with the fear of change.

Sometimes, abundantly skilled artists and inventors fail miserably because they wouldn't, couldn't try out new ideas for fear of failure. Even when they had the confidence to try out new concepts, society adopted the most critical approach. Consider the case of Charles Franklin Kettering when he presented the electric self-starter for automobiles in 1911. This device made driving safer and much more convenient. But a prominent member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers reacted in this way: This man has profaned every fundamental law of Electrical Engineering...

No wonder we are so apprehensive of trying out creative, unconventional concepts. This fear of failure, of change seems ingrained in human society.

Overcoming the fear

So how do we break free of its strangle hold and venture out into the unexplored frontiers of our true potential?

There are several approaches:

• Short-circuit the 'fear' response-control the Amygdala-the portion of the brain that triggers the flight response. Take things a ridiculously small bit at a time. Dr.Robert Maurer describes this process in his book  One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way One small step can change your life.  He has effectively used this to bring transformation in people apprehensive of change.
• Techniques for silencing the chattering critic inside the brain. This includes techniques like:
• Meditation
• Stream of consciousness writing: Benefits
• Relaxation exercises:  5 Ways to Keep Yourself Relaxed
• Inducing creativity enhancing Alpha brain waves by listening to appropriate music
• Positive self-talk by hammering positive statements about yourself into your mind, so that it finally overrides the negative self-talk.
• Writing daily affirmations that state an ideal image of you, with all positive qualities. You can also write affirmations stating an ideal outcome of a situation.

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Save Yourself from Online Frauds

"How to Publish Your Book and Get Rich Quick" Screamed this title (or a similar one) at me from a successful writer's webpage. I had checked out her page for some tips on writing, she has a writing experience of more than 20 years. It was there that I saw this ad and her own write up for this book.

The title was intriguing and tempting enough (but the phrase Get Rich Quick should have warned me). I clicked on the link to Amazon, almost decided to buy, being at a low point. However, once inside, I tried to have an inside sample view of the book. There was none. The price was $18.95. There were three reviews, two of which were scathing and blasted the book, accusing the author of poor language, and unrefined content. One review was highly praising of the book, but my suspicions had already been roused.

Getting into Google land, I did a search on the author and found there were hardly any reviews on his books on the net. The book was available on Google books, and there also no sample view was available.

Further research revealed that the author had published only five books so far! This was tragic, considering that he had an arsenal of tricks to make money quick. Aha, Tricks- there was it again-the book offered tricks to skyrocket you to publishing success. That sealed it. There was no need for any tricks.

But the larger question here is, is it OK for authors of repute to promote such products?
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Dealing with Non-stop Talkers

Have you ever been caught up in a dialogue which in effect turned out to be a monologue? In your eagerness to practice the techniques of empathetic listening, you realize you have just walked into a non-stop one-way conversation bog. Did you feel like fleeing as the monologue flits across various topics of no consequence to you? Worse, the speaker asks you for an opinion, and before you get to express it, resumes the tirade.

This is especially trying when you are hard pressed for time, with a long list of things to do. Searching long for the answer, I found different people handled this in different ways. See the list below. some of the methods can appear rude and you have to consider your relationship with the person before applying them.
For instance, if it is somebody who is close to you like immediate family or your spouse, you need to be very careful and considerate. If it is your boss or colleague, again you have to exercise caution.

Non-stop talkers usually chatter off without considering the effect they are making on the listeners. You might be squirming to escape, but he/she fails to notice your discomfort.

An intelligent conversation is irrelevant here because the non-stop talker does not wait for your response, but is on a never ending monologue.

So here are the methods of escape:

1. Get yourself relaxed. Counting your breaths is a simple way to do this. When you are relaxed, calmly look the chattering talker in the eye, in the spot between the eyes. Do not show any expression and do not force it into a staring contest. If you can maintain your steady gaze for some time, the person will slow down, and eventually stop. Be careful that he/she doesn't take it for aggression or romance. Break your gaze when you feel uncomfortable. Also, the person is likely to get unsettled after a few minutes of silent gazing. Then smile sincerely, excuse yourself and exit the scene (Before he starts on the next barrage, encouraged by your smile). You might need to practice gazing expressionless using a mirror.
2. Mentally offer an affirmation of good will towards them: "I respect you. You need to be listened to, but first you need to listen to yourself"
3. Listen for sometime, then excuse yourself saying you have some work to do.
4. If the person is in deep mental agony or has a problem, of course you need to give your ears. Just take care it does not become a pattern. Everybody has to solve their own problems.
5. Do not tell them about their talking problem unless you are confident of dealing with unexpected reactions.
6. You cannot try the gazing technique on everybody. If the person concerned is your boss, you'd better keep your distance discretely.

The reason people talk non-stop is a chronic need for attention and validation.
Minty Mcnair gives some valuable tips on this issue here:Keys for Relating to Non-Stop Talkers.

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Model Toddlers to Improve Your Learning Skills

If you have ever watched a child learning to walk, you have observed the principles of success in learning any new skill, for an entire lifetime. You probably do not need any more fancy training in learning skills. However, alas, we acquire a lot of unwanted training that hinders our successful learning.

The broad stages that a toddler learning to walk goes through are the following:

• The child who had remained lying until now, observes elders standing, and instinctively, tries to imitate.

• It first learns to stand up, by holding onto a wall or some other support.

• After having learnt how to stand, it tries to imitate elders walking.

• Takes a step, falls down.

• Picks herself up, and attempts again.

• The mid step, where she has to shift weight from one leg to the other-this is the tricky part. She does not know if she will fall down. She falls many times in the mid-step. Nevertheless, everybody tells her she can do it. Nobody ever discouraged a child learning to walk.

• After falling down many times, she understands that if she transfers the weight to the other leg fast enough, she will not fall. When she has this confidence, she has learnt to walk. Now all that remains is practice, practice,...to improve the learnt skill.

Why learning becomes boring and hard later on

Later, while learning other skills like Math, Vocabulary, Drawing etc., the child goes through the same process-trying, failing, trying,...However this time, there are people with her who want her to learn as fast as possible, to save their time. They do not have the patience to let her learn through failing and having fun in trying. When the child fails a number of times, the elder may start saying comments like: Looks like you are having problems with this. This seems to be hard for you, why don’t you try harder?

Worse comments: You stupid! Can’t you do something as simple as this? What’s in your head? Is it made of clay? 

Finally: You'll never make it! Idiot!

Unfortunately, parents and teachers have also their ego to defend, so they need to prove that their verdict was correct-the child cannot learn well!

The blow has been struck. It stays with us throughout life, making a terror out of learning. This bad training gives us the queasy, unpleasant feeling and the anxiety when things go wrong while we attempt something new.

Then we start our own self-talk, which reinforces the old negative talk given by others: I seem to get nothing right! I am messing things up again! Oh what an idiot I am! 

This ensures failure.

How learning any new activity can be fun

Suppose the child in the above example had nobody telling him negative comments while learning and failing. He would make many attempts while learning Mathematics and other subjects fail many times in his attempts, but eventually he would get it right.

Because you have been given negative feedback countless times, and because you have started telling yourself the same negative things about you, the only way to reach success is to learn and say positive things about you:

I am a good learner! I can do it if I keep trying!

Learning is fun!

Failing is good, it helps me learn better.

I can fail as many times as I need, each time I learn something new!

The toddler who is learning to walk is the best possible inspiration for learners and students of all ages, the world over.

How many times, and how long do I have to repeat positive self-talk?

As long as you stop saying the negative things about yourself. I have chosen to continue indefinitely, for negative programming is not easy to remove permanently.

However, it is easy to find out when it has become effective: when you habitually start saying positive self-talk, your performance improves in every aspect of your life: not just learning or studying but in social life, relationships, finance, all spheres. For this, you need to learn and repeat self-talk which covers all areas: Self-esteem, Being organized, Taking responsibility, etc.

What to say when you talk to yourself  is a primary text in the science of self-talk. Dr.Shad Helmstetter is the author of this book which has sold millions of copies in more than 64 countries. It is available on Amazon. Once I bought this book, I got the gist of the self-improvement system and how to sustain it: it all depends on my thoughts.

  


You might want to check out this post also: Having fun in learning skills

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A Relationship Survival Tip

After the initial starry-eyed period of relationships are over, couples come to face their own weaknesses- and their partners'. Arguments turn into accusations of how everything was alright until the 'other' came along. It is always the 'other' who messes things up. Rarely do people own up their own errors and weaknesses that ruin relationships.

We forget that while pointing a finger at the other, three of our remaining fingers are pointing back at us.

We are irritated with our partners/spouses for sloppiness, for leaving the dishes in the sink overnight, for parking the car the wrong way-once one starts making a list, it starts to grow and grow. All the good things the person said or did, fade into oblivion. Finally we conclude: this is not the right person for me. Have I thought whether I have tried to be the right person? It rarely occurs to me, if ever.

The following thought may help save sinking relationships: Whenever we are tempted to accuse (even in the mind) our partner of a fault or a behavior problem, we could take a moment and ask ourselves: Have I ever committed or am committing similar mistakes or any other serious mistake?


Most certainly, one would come up with quite a large list. If it is difficult, we only need to ask those with  whom we interact closely.

Absence of faults makes us candidates for sainthood or perfect beings. A great yogi said: Those who are too good for this world are adorning some other (Sri Yukteswar, quoted by Paramahamsa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi).
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Using Affirmations to Overcome Life's Frustrations

Oftentimes, when we go through our lives, maintaining our goals, dreams, and ambitions, we may be writing affirmations and visualizing for their manifestation. But we run into roadblocks along the way, which can sap our inspiration and energy. For example, we may have an argument with the spouse over the way something should be done, or your subordinate at the office may make a costly mistake, or our car may throw up some problem. These can act like a wrench thrown into a smoothly running gear system, messing things up. If we get caught up in it and react emotionally, problems are compounded, throwing us off course.

For me, the Indian public Internet service MTNL has often been a test of patience. It goes kaput right in the middle of transactions, or while booking train tickets. Watching videos meant having to refresh pages each time the service stalled. Despite this, the bills would never reduce in amount. I eventually had to get a private service for urgent needs.

How you handle such frustrations in daily life can really influence your mood and sometimes, the outcomes as well. Yes, its mysterious, but being positive in frustrations seems to magically turn things around in the right direction you desire. Even now, just as I was writing this, MTNL repeated its game: the Internet line went dead. 

I felt the frustration and the anger start rising in me, with all the negative arguments- about being cheated etc.

Suddenly, I held myself in check: "Hey, why not try something new ?"
"Try what?", my mind countered.
"Why not try affirmations stating my expectations ?"
"OK. Go ahead and try. Lets see what happens."

Here my expectation was to have an uninterrupted broadband service, 24 hours of the day. So I said to myself:


I'm having an excellent, continuous broadband connection. Uninterrupted seemed a negative word.


I repeated it a few times. Actually I was only hoping to find another economical, wire-line service provider. Because, wireless broadband is pathetic here. But the next instant, the modem sprang to life, blinking away steadily, which meant I could depend on the connection. It is still running now.

I'm thinking of using this in other areas of my life-in arguments, negotiations, interviews, whatever. To get fair and  reasonable value for my time, money, and other investments. I deserve it, don't I ?

Have you tried using affirmations (or similar techniques) to get positive outcomes in your life? I'd love to hear of them.
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